How Really Power Surges Destroy Your Computer and How to Avoid

How Really Power Surges Destroy Your Computer and How to Avoid

Author: Dicky Satrio Sudiro

Power surge are one of the most feared incident on electronic devices. Same as computer, they are really susceptible to power surges. Even though surges usually last only milliseconds (and are somewhat filtered by the transformer in the power supply), that high voltage can exceed the withstand voltage of the insulating layers inside the integrated circuit chips and burned everything inside your computer.

The power delivered to your electronics devices and computer is stable and constant, in theory of course. In real life, it doesn't work that way. Often power surge occurs when the normal flow of electricity is interrupted, and then started again, or there was an occurrence that something sends excess electrical energy into the system. Any number of events, from lightning strikes to power failures, can cause power surges. Even your own electrical devices and computer can cause them. Refrigerators and air conditioners, for example, have motors that turn on and off, diverting electricity to and from other appliances and producing low-level power surges. On computer, internal peripheral can cause small surges that can reduced your computer lifespan or even destroy it completely.

On computer a switching power supply is designed to convert AC into various DC voltages. The internal transformers on power supply that do this, the capacitors to bridge over dips in the line power, all these are rated to handle a certain amount of energy at any given time. If you go outside of range of that certain amount, you overload the parts. Maybe marginal parts fail and die. Maybe they let through more energy than they should. In some cases, maybe things catch on fire. Like things you saw on fried chips due to extreme overclock. Cheaper Power Supply Units will be using cheaper components - the upshot of this is the components have weaker tolerances, and don't handle going outside their tolerances as gracefully.

To prevent it you need a good UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) to protect your computer and another electronic appliance. However no UPS can withstand power of nature. Even a good UPS cannot tolerate extreme power of lighting. During storm or rain situation you might want to consider turn off you computer and unplug it. Also unplug phone lines and another line like coaxial cables that are being used for cable TV and broadband connection, since they are susceptible to lighting strike. Power surges caused by lighting are seldom to happen though there are possibilities.

On computer you will face another problem. Internal surges that can't be prevent from external UPS. This caused simply by turn it on and off your computer. So every time you turn on and off your computer, you actually decreased life span of your computer and adding possibility to destroy the component completely. And there is no way to avoid this matter for now. Since there is no data how it will affect your computer. I suggest that you scheduled your computer to be use as efficient as possible.--FA

-------------
Fresh Daily Computer News - Digital Binary

Article Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_27526_10.html

About the Author: Dicky is an IT university student that maintain a blog Digital Binary - Fresh Daily Computer News and enjoying computer and communication technology since he was a little.

http://digital-binary-review.blogspot.com/